Discopath

World Premiere, Hosted by Director Renaud Gauthier with members of the cast and crew

New York City, 1976. Duane Lewis is a cook at a hamburger joint. Whenever he hears disco music, he literally goes into a trance. The day he loses his job, he comes across a young roller-skater in the park who, hoping to console him, invites him to a night out at the discotheque Seventh Heaven. Bombarded by decibels, Duane’s trance state quickly degenerates into homicidal mania. The girl who brought him there soon enough bitterly regrets her invitation… Upon waking up the next morning, Duane hops on the first plane to Montreal, using a stolen passport. Four years later, he’s altered his identity. He now answers to the name of Martin, and works as an audio-visual tech at a private school for teenage girls. He wears special gear to cut out external sounds, and his employers imagine him to be hard of hearing. As a long weekend approaches, two of the school’s students elect to hide out there so they can spend the weekend in the building alone. Alone with Duane. Their secret disco party has horrible consequences as Duane’s murderous madness reaches its peak level and he now has several potential victims in his sights. Meanwhile, a lieutenant detective from New York believes he has figured out the serial killer’s modus operandi and he links up with the Montreal police force to track down the “discopath”…

DISCOPATH is the debut feature film from Renaud Gauthier, a total one-man-band who while helming this movie also juggles screenwriting, art direction, producing the film and composing its score. It’s an entirely independent work from this director/producer, who sold his own home to finance it. His work is thoroughly familiar to fans of Fantasia, SPASM and Vitesse Lumière as he’s had an array of short films screened at all of these, including the legendary INSPECTOR BRONCO series, a smash hit at fests, on screens and on the stage. Nostalgia is already his stock in trade, his knack for evoking the smiles and styles of the ’70s, so it’s no surprise that his first feature is soaked in disco culture. But beyond the art direction, the mise en scene connects to the era by recalling the golden age of Italian giallo and lessons of masters like John Carpenter and Brian De Palma. Also of note is that the dialogue in this retro slasher film is half-and-half English and French, as suits each character. The special effects, meanwhile, are the handiwork of Rémy Couture, who we’re thrilled to see doing what he does best.